TO FIND how to employ a waste material to completely clean up unsafe chemicals, is a distinctive achievement. To take action while employed in a battle area is doubly impressive. But that, with just a little help from some foreign friends, is merely what Abdulsamie Hanano of Syria's Atomic Energy

Commission, in Damascus, did. Within the last four years Dr Hanano, who works in the commission's molecular-biology section, and his fellow workers have developed ways to use the rocks (or pits) of times, a waste materials product of the fruit-packing industry, to completely clean up dioxins, a particularly persistent and nasty type of organic and natural pollutant that can lead to reproductive ,and developmental problems, destruction the disease fighting capability, and cause cancer even. Dioxins are produced as a by-product of professional processes mainly.

Dr Hanano lit on night out stones because of this job for three reasons. One was they are rich in natural oils of a sort out that contain an affinity for dioxins. The next was that, though they aren't unique in this oil-richness, unlike other oil-rich seed products (olives, rape, sesame and so forth) they haven't any commercial value. The 3rd was that, despite missing commercial value, they may be abundant.

It had been not the petrol by itself that Dr Hanano wished, though. Alternatively, he designed to extract without trouble the droplets into which this essential oil is packaged inside a stone. Besides essential oil, these droplets contain special protein ,that help collectively keep them. And each droplet is surrounded by a membrane made up of a substance called a phospholipid which, unlike oil, is of interest to water. Which means that when the droplets are shaken up with normal water, they form a well balanced emulsion.

To assemble the droplets, Dr Hanano and his acquaintances first softened up their night out rocks ,by soaking them in normal water for 14 days. That done, they floor them and centrifuged the effect up. This technique separated the droplets from all of those other gunk as a creamy emulsion. It was a question of testing the emulsion's ability to extract dioxins from water. As the put together group record in Frontiers in Seed Technology, this well was done by it. The droplets' phospholipid membranes proved no barrier to the passing of dioxins, which gathered in the engine oil satisfactorily. Among Dr Hanano's collaborators, Denis Murphy of the University of South Wales, in Britain, describes the droplets as acting like little magnets for dioxins. "Within one minute," he says, "practically all the dioxins are sucked out of a remedy. It's very fast."

Specifically, the droplets ingested 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, an exceptionally harmful herbicide that was one of the constituents of Agent Orange, used to demolish vegetation by American pushes through the Vietnam warfare. And, after the dioxins are inside the droplets, their affinity for the olive oil is in a way that they never leave. Losing them is merely a subject of scooping in the droplets (that will eventually popularity of any normal water made up of them) and destroying them safely and securely in, say, a furnace.

Dr Hanano's first idea for a useful use for his creation is to completely clean up seafood farms. Though dioxin air pollution generally in most parts of the ocean is low level pretty, it is commonly higher nearby the coast, where seafood farms can be found, because of run-off from the land. Dioxins moreover, like certain other sea contaminants such as cadmium and mercury, should never be demolished or excreted, so accumulate progressively in the flesh of seafood. Cartridges containing dioxin-absorbing droplets, by which the impounded water of your fish farm was cycled, would help stop that happening.

Remediating polluted land could also, the researchers expect, be on the credit cards, although they have yet to work through how to recuperate the droplets, after the emulsion has been sprayed on the damaged ground. If indeed they can achieve this, however, the group will probably have lots of customers. Substances like 2 3 7 8 tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin are so long-lived, that right now the Vietnamese remain trying to completely clean the mess Agent Orange created.

Title : Syrian research workers use date rocks to suck up dangerous materialsDescription : Syrian research workers use date rocks to suck up dangerous materials TO FIND how to employ a waste material to completely clean up unsafe...Rating : 5